Run, Run, As Fast As You Can
by SawyerRaleigh
Summary: Setsuka, Seishirou and Fuuma: putting the "fun" in "dysfunctional family".
1. Chapter 1

Looking back, it all began with Setsuka gouging out the little girl next door's eye. If she hadn't done that then all of this never would have happened.

I was only about three at the time so all I remembered was there being a lot of policemen at our house and that was just because I thought their badges were really cool. My parents must have been dying of embarrassment, because they sure as hell wouldn't have been dying of remorse. Never mind the fact that the little girl nearly died of shock and blood loss and never spoke coherently again, her psychological and emotional growth forever stunted. No, reputation was everything to them and this permanently tarnished it. I guess that's why they locked Setsuka away and never spoke of her again. Somehow even at the tender age of three, I knew better than to even ask them what happened to Onee-chan. I probably would have forgotten she ever existed, just like my parents wanted to if it hadn't been for Seishirou Onii-chan.

But then I guess a lot of this is his fault too.


	2. Chapter 2

Rooms 117 through 121 were all empty except for one. When the patient in room 119 had come here three years ago it was highly recommended that she be kept separate from the other patients. Every once in a while a new orderly would come and feel sorry for the girl, thinking she was just lonely, especially as she not allowed near the other patients and no one ever came to visit her. They would think that all she needed was some love and attention and the sweet, pretty little girl would be completely harmless. They were wrong of course. Not only because Setsuka Sakurazuka was anything but harmless but because she did receive visitors. In fact, her younger brothers were on her way to see her at that very moment.

Seishirou was at least. Fuuma had been until a moment ago when an unusually brightly colored caterpillar had caught his eye. He knelt beside it and found a stiff leaf to poke at it with. At first it squirmed away in surprise but then it crept onto the leaf at Fuuma's insistent prodding. He giggled ticklishly as the small critter inched up the foliage to explore his finger. Once the verdant little length of life was settled on the back of Fuuma's hand he ran to catch up to his brother, who had kept walking, disregarding the boy's pause.

"Onii-chan! Look!" Fuuma held the back of his hand up to show Seishirou, still half-running to keep up with his brother's longer strides.

Seishirou threw the caterpillar a careless glance.

"It's a patterpillar!"

"Caterpillar." Seishirou corrected in a voice laced with boredom and reluctant tolerance.

"Patter-pillar." Fumma murmured, slowly turning his hand over as the bug reached the edge and tried to climb around it to settle in his palm.

"Caterpillar." Seishirou repeated.

"Why would it be called that?" Fuuma inquired. "It doesn't look like a cat or a pillar… unless it stood up straight maybe it would. Like how snakes do when you play flutes at them. Can you charm patter-pillars like snakes?"

"I doubt it."

Fuuma poked at it with his other fingertip. "Maybe if you had a really tiny flute?"

Seishirou rolled his eyes. "Still no probably."

"Then why is it called that?"

"I don't know why it's called that but that's its name." Seishirou sighed as he pulled himself up onto the top of the stone wall surrounding the asylum.

"Nuh-uh. Its name is Aoi."

"Hey are you coming up here or not?" Seishirou kicked his heals into the wall impatiently.

Fuuma looked back and forth between the wall and the caterpillar. "I don't wanna put Aoi down. He's my new friend."

"Fine then. Stay down there." Seishirou dropped to the other side, vanishing from view.

"No!" Fuuma threw down the caterpillar and scrambled to climb up the wall without success. "Onii-chan!" He wailed.

"Come on then if you're coming." Seishirou called from the other side.

"I can't get up!" Fuuma cried in a half-panicked sob as he tried to gain purchase on the smooth stones and merely slipped back down on the grass.

Seishirou sighed again and easily climbed back to the top of the wall to pull the sniffling boy up with him. "Next time I'm leaving you behind." He warned.

Fuuma nodded and dropped to the ground with him, quietly creeping along the edge of the asylum's courtyard until they reached the window they were looking for. It was more of a grate at the moment actually as both boys simultaneously discovered, noting the lack of glass panes in front of the usual steel bars.

Seishirou was unperturbed by this as it meant one less layer for him to get through and he carefully pried at the steel grate until it slid into just the right spot to come loose and fall easily into his arms like a swooning lover. He tossed it into the bushes nearby and he and Fuuma slipped inside.

Setsuka was lying flat on her back staring at the ceiling and didn't make a sound or movement when their feet hit the linoleum floor. Fuuma knew better than to think that she hadn't noticed them come in though.

"Whatcha doin'?" Seishirou knelt beside her, looking up at the blank ceiling with its grayish fluorescent lighting interspersed among the solid tiles.

Setsuka turned her head to look up at him. "I'm looking up at the stars." She informed him.

"Really?"

She lifted one delicate snowy hand to brush his cheek. "They're beautiful."

Seishirou smiled and captured her fingertips to brush a feather light kiss across the back of her hand. "I brought you something."

"Ooo a present?" she sat up eagerly and rested a hand on his knee as she leaned forward to see what he was pulling out of his jacket.

Fuuma glanced over his shoulder, having been distracted, staring out the window at the bird's nest in a nearby tree.

The gift turned out to be a book of classical Japanese poetry with gold-tipped pages and a silk bookmark sewn to the spine. Setsuka breathed a murmur of appreciation as she ran her fingertips across the soft genuine leather cover.

It was a good gift, Fuuma thought, because it was beautiful. Setsuka loved beautiful things. Actually it was almost more accurate to say that she only acknowledged beautiful things, as if they were all that even registered to her senses. He had never thought much about his own appearance until he realized that and guessed that it was why she never seemed to notice that he was in the room. He had always thought it was just because she was too distracted by Onii-chan but eventually Fuuma had discovered it was because he was just too plain-looking. He didn't really know for sure but he figured Onii-chan must be one of the most beautiful things in the world then because Setsuka seemed to love him more than anything else. Fuuma fiddled with the chipped paint at the edges of the windowsill and idly wondered if he would look like Seishirou when he was big.

"Read it to me?" The question mark was unnecessary really, Seishirou would do nearly anything Setsuka asked.

Fuuma wandered away from the windowsill to join the two of them on the small single bed with its luxurious silk bedspread, yet another gift from Seishirou although neither Fuuma nor the orderlies had ever figured out how he had gotten it to her. Fuuma flopped down on his stomach beside Seishirou even as Setsuka curled up beside their brother with her head in his lap. Her hair spilled across Seishirou's legs and the tips fell in graceful ribbons of silk much softer than even the bedspread before Fuuma so he found himself stroking them, and holding the edges of her hair up to brush against his cheek or pretend to paint Seishirou's leg with.

Seishirou ignored them both, reading softly from the book of poetry as the light from the broken window slowly turned golden.

After what felt like days to Fuuma, he noticed Setsuka shift, creating little ripples in the black rivers across the bedspread and break her still, doll-like grace.

"Words are so pretty." She giggled and sat up, leaning in close to Seishirou's face. "But the ones you say are the prettiest." She ran her fingertips over his lips, exploring the light curve of sensitive skin as he broke into a noncommittal smile. "Could I steal your pretty voice and make those pretty words my own?"

"And just how would you do that?" he asked, light strains of amusement weaving into the even tone.

He didn't pull back or move at all when she pressed her lips to his for a brief moment. "Like that."

"I see."

She giggled and, wrapping one arm around him, pressed her cheek to his and read a passage from the book over his shoulder, letting the words glide over her tongue in a symphony of prose.

"Beautiful." He said. "Absolutely beautiful."

She giggled again and kissed his cheek.

Then footsteps tapped along the tile floors of the hallway outside.

"We really must be going." Seishirou gently informed his sister.

"Don't go." She supplicated, nuzzling his neck and sliding a hand up his shoulder.

"I have to. If they find Fuuma and I in here, the orderlies are going to make it even harder for us to come visit and you wouldn't want us to have trouble getting here would you?"

"I don't care so long as you do."

Seishirou chuckled and disentangled himself from her grasp gently, like a jewelry carefully untangling a delicate silver chain. "I'll return." A strand of ebony hair had strayed across her face and against her porcelain skin it was like a crack in a figurine's features. Seishirou brushed it away, tucking it carefully behind her ear.

Setsuka smiled sadly at him as she followed the two of them to the window. "But for how long?"

Fuuma climbed out of the window first then turned around, waiting patiently for Onii-chan.

"For as long as you want me to." Seishirou paused once outside the window to rest a hand on the windowsill and lean in to leave a more lingering kiss upon her lips. "It'll be cold soon." He remarked as he pulled away and nodded at the window frame. "So don't break the glass next time okay?"

Setsuka giggled. "But it was so pretty broken. Like lovely little crystals all across the floor." She waved her hands in an imitation of sparkling or scattering. "And the man in white hurt himself on it when he was cleaning it up! But I got into trouble for licking it from his hand and his blood didn't even taste very good anyway."

Seishirou gave her a soft smile. "Take care Setsuka." He whispered before replacing the grate and leading Fuuma out of the asylum grounds.

The sky was deepening to the rich color of a plum as the temperature slowly began to drop to the chilly warning of an early autumn. Seishirou walked with his head held high and his eyes straight ahead, barely aware of the little boy half-running to keep up with him. As they passed an alleyway something in it moved, rummaging through the dumpster overflowing with waste. Fuuma paused to peer curiously down into the tenebrous passage and jumped when a pair of glowing green eyes peered back at him, accompanied by a small hiss. He ran away, heart racing, to catch up to Seishirou.

Onii-chan's hand wasn't in his pocket like it was earlier when he was holding the book he noticed. It was by his side, swaying slightly as Seishirou walked. Fuuma studied his brother's expressionless features for a moment before experimentally reaching up and grasping the free hand. Seishirou glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, not breaking his stride or even turning his head.

He also made no move to pull his hand away though and that was good enough for Fuuma. He even thought that Seishirou's hand gave a small twitch and his fingers curled ever so slightly around his but it was hard to tell with Onii-chan.

.

_Author's note: Aoi means "blue-green". :P It was my best guess at an equivalent of him naming the caterpillar something like "Greenie". _

_And Seishirou's name is a reference to stars. When Setsuka looks up at him and says she's staring at the stars, I meant to imply some abiguity in whether she means she's imagining them or if she's talking about Seishirou._


	3. Chapter 3

_Author's Note: Sorry guys, I may be a while uploading anything for a while after this. I apologize to my readers._

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"Again?" Fuuma begged from beneath the edge of the comforter pulled up to his nose.

"No, no young master, it's time for little boys like you to be off to sleep." The nanny fondly ruffled his hair as she closed the book and replaced it on the shelf, in alphabetical order, as books should be. Then she turned off the light and started to leave the room but the door opened before she could step out. She demurely stepped aside with her hands clasped and her head bowed as Fuuma's mother and father appeared in the doorway, silhouetted shadows against the hall light. Years later, Fuuma would recall their silhouettes more than he would ever remember their faces.

"Good night son." They wished him in unison with all the stiffness of a rigorously followed protocol.

They and the maid both left, leaving Fuuma in the darkness. He could hear their footsteps all the way down the hallway but never once could he remember hearing them open Seishirou Onii-chan's bedroom door to wish him a good night. Fuuma often wondered about that.

He rolled over to face the wall and snuggled into a small ball, drifting slowly to sleep.

It was still dark out when he woke up for some reason. Fuuma wondered if it was a stormy day, but even then the room would be washed in watercolor gray. He yawned and turned on his lamp, sliding reluctantly out from under the comforter to pad quietly over to the closet door to pull out his school uniform.

But when he opened the door, it didn't lead to his closet but to a different room, one he had never seen before. Intrigued, he crept inside, realizing that it was a storeroom of some kind, full of all sorts of mysterious objects gathering dust as they lay haphazardly strewn on rickety shelves or precariously piled in wobbly stacks on the floor.

He crept along squeaky floorboards, emitting the occasionally squeak of a sneeze at the dust even his small footsteps kicked up. Unable to see where he was going, now that his own bedroom door had vanished behind him, Fuuma wandered through the storeroom, looking for an exit until he tripped over a cane of some sort and fell to the floor with an oof and a thud.

A door creaked open a few meters away and in the light that filtered in through puffs of dust, he realized that it was a glossy pink staff with a bird-looking handle that had brought him down.

"Usually visitors take the more polite route of arriving by front door." A woman's voice announced, laced more with amusement than annoyance.

Fuuma raised his head in surprise then immediately turned defensive. "I didn't do it on purpose! Honest! I was just trying to get my school uniform out of the closet! I didn't know that the door would go here instead!"

She knelt before him with a sympathetic look. "Sometimes doors take us places we never intended to go."

"Huh?"

"What's your name, kiddo?"

"Fuuma. Fuuma Sakurazuka." He replied promptly.

She clucked her tongue. "Okay kiddo, Rule #1 about travelling like this? You don't ever tell people you meet along the way your real name, kay?"

"How come?"

"It's dangerous; someone can use your name against you."

"How can you use a person's _name_ against them?"

"That's a lesson for another time."

"Well what name am I supposed to tell people then?"

"Whatever you like, so long as it isn't your real one." The woman stood up and held out a hand to him. "But in the meantime, you can call me Yuko!"

Fuuma took her hand as he pulled himself to his feet. "Yuko-san? Is that your real name?"

"Of course not!" She gave him a wide grin as she led him out of the stockroom into a sitting area. "However, this occasion calls for a little celebration!"

"Occasion?" Fuuma wondered what she meant by celebration. He loved holidays; new year's was his favorite of them all because he enjoyed the fireworks. He wondered if there were going to be fireworks at this celebration. Then again, he also wondered what they were celebrating. Maybe it was the strange woman's birthday?

"Maru! Moro!"

A pair of girls, one with long, fluffy blue pigtails and the other with short pink hair bounced out of a door down the hallways together. Their skin tone was _almost_ flesh-colored, but a little too lackluster, and their faces _almost_ mimicked lifelike expressions but failed to truly convey emotions. It was as though they were dolls clearly modeled after humans, but decidedly not human.

"Yes mistress!" They answered in perfect unison, reminding Fuuma vaguely of his parents. It was a strange, surreal feeling noting that similarity. He wondered if his parents too merely imitated humanity.

"Bring some sake and some snacks!"

"Yes mistress!" They answered again in unison before bouncing off only to return a few minutes later with the request.

Yuko flopped down at a low table, inviting Fuuma to join her but strangely making no such offer to the two girls. Fuuma suddenly wondered if they actually ate.

"You drink sake kid?"

Fuuma shook his head. He had asked his parents once for a sip of wine and they had immediately denied the request, informing him that alcohol was strictly prohibited for minors and they would not tolerate him drinking until he reached his majority. Of course Onii-chan and Onee-chan sometimes shared wine when he visited although he never knew how Seishirou was able to buy it since he was definitely still a minor too.

"I'm not allowed."

Yuko waved her hand dismissively. "Nonsense. I'm offering it freely."

"But Mom and Dad said…"

She leaned forward, propping her chin up in her hand with her elbow on the table. "You're a pretty obedient kid huh? Well I guess that makes sense. But you can drink here if you want. Promise I won't tell."

Fuuma hesitated then curiously reached for the glass she had poured him and took a sip. He nearly spit it out immediately afterward, screwing his face up in a disgusted pucker and frowning at the cup before forcing himself to swallow out of respect.

Yuko laughed hysterically. "Don't care much for it huh kiddo? Oh well. Maybe in a few years it'll grow on you." She ordered Maru and Moro to bring him some juice instead which he quickly drank to dispel the aftertaste.

"So shall we toast?" Yuko held up her glass suggestively.

"Toast?" Fuuma's thoughts immediately turned to bread. "Can I have butter?"

Yuko laughed again. "Not that kind of toast hon. The kind where you salute something good that has happened."

"Oh… what happened?"

"You arrived!"

Fuuma was taken aback. "Were you waiting for me?"

"I was in a way." Yuko gulped down the sake with a satisfied sigh and then poured herself some more.

"How come?"

"I need an errand boy. You know, someone who can go around fetching me things I can't go get myself. In other words- you're working for me now!" She laughed manically as the two girls danced around behind her shouting 'working for the mistress, working for the mistress!'.

Fuuma began to really worry. "I can't stay here forever." He began to protest. "I need to go home to Mom and Dad and Onii-chan and Onee-chan even though she doesn't technically live with us but still…" His words stumbled out all at once, tripping over one another in his attempt to explain as quickly as possible. He began to tear up, thinking that he had been kidnapped and was going to be forced into working here for a crazy person for the rest of his life. He had heard horror stories about that kind of thing happening to children who wandered off before and he wondered if he had done something bad to deserve being captured like this.

"No, no." Yuko replied more soothingly. "You don't have to stay here forever. You can go back home here in a bit."

"Oh…" Fuuma sniffled then wiped his face with his sleeve. "I can?"

"Of course." Yuko gave him a gentle smile, easing his worries somewhat then sobered up once more. "But you'll be back sometimes. When I need you to go places that I can't."

"Why me?" Fuuma wondered.

"Not many people can do what you do."

"What do you mean 'what I do'?" Fuuma eyed the cake on the table between them.

"You grant wishes. And you can travel to other places to do that.

"You mean like France?" He asked around a mouthful of cake.

She gave him a fond smile and his heart soared for a moment. Nobody really smiled at him like that back home.

"Well you could go to France but I meant you can go to other dimensions."

"You mean like time travel and stuff?"

"Sort of. Time doesn't flow the same between dimensions." Yuko stared off into space thoughtfully. "It's more like you can go to different worlds. Places that are like where you are from but a little bit different and places that are completely different."

"I don't get it." Fuuma admitted a little sheepishly. Onii-chan probably would.

"You will once you start doing it."

"Well what kind of stuff do you need? I mean, I don't really have money…"

"I'm not sending you out to do grocery shopping. I'm sending you out to obtain things I need to grant people's wishes."

Fuuma's brow furrowed as he processed this. "So you grant wishes?"

"Yes."

"And I grant wishes?"

"Yes."

His eyes brightened. "So I'm like you?"

"No."

His shoulders slumped. "How come?"

"I can't leave this place." Yuko looked around the room. "But you can. In fact, I think as you get older you're going to find it tricky staying in one place." She gave him a sad but knowing look. "I guess you could say that people who have wishes come to me whereas you go to them."

"How come?"

"I don't know." Yuko stared sadly into the distance. "I only know a lot. I don't know everything."

"Oh." Fuuma considered this, thinking that it must be boring to be stuck in one place. He hated being stuck at home even for a few days when he was sick. "You said I could go home right?"

"Right."

"How do I come back when you need me? Are you always going to be in my closet?"

Yuko laughed. "No but don't you worry. You'll make it back here when I need you."

"Okay."

She studied him for a moment then reached forward and ruffled his hair. "You're a good kid, you know that?"

Fuuma lit up at the praise.

"Anyway, you should probably be getting home here soon."

She led him out into the front yard.

"Wait… shouldn't we be going back to the stock room?" He asked in confusion.

"The way you get to someplace isn't always the way back to where you came from." She replied cryptically. She led him to the wooden fence that surrounded the yard and placed a hand reassuringly on his shoulder. "You know kid? I think you'll do alright." She told him before ushering him through the open gateway.

He blinked, disoriented for a moment then rubbed his eyes to discover that he was on his own street, standing outside a neighbor's fence. He stared at it for a long moment then shivered, realizing that it was cold out and he was in only his superhero pajamas. He trudged down the street back to his own house, wondering how on earth he was going to get back inside. He wandered around the house several times, checking all of the doors and windows but everything was locked. He couldn't ring the doorbell; Mom and Dad would be so upset with him for sneaking out even though he hadn't done it on purpose.

In his panic, he sat down on the front doorsteps and wrapped his arms around his small frame, sniffling as he felt tears beginning to prickle his eyes. Then an idea struck him and he sneaked around to the side of the house, counting the windows until he reached the fourth one down. He knocked on it quietly at first and then a little more insistently when no answer came. At last the curtain behind the glass was thrust aside forcefully and Seishirou appeared, glaring at him beneath sleep-ruffled bangs.

"Onii-chan!" Fuuma cried happily. "Let me in!"

Seishirou studied him carefully for a long moment before cracking open the glass just enough that they could hear one another more clearly.

"What's your favorite animal?" He asked sharply.

"Huh? Dragons?" Fuuma replied, confused.

"Okay." Seishirou opened the window wide enough to let him in.

"What was that for?" Fuuma asked as he crawled over the windowsill.

"To make sure you weren't a demon disguised as Fuuma." He answered curtly, carefully closing and locking the window again. "Why were you outside?"

Fuuma explained the whole scenario with the closet and the strange lady named Yuko. He knew if he told anyone else they would tell him to stop making up stories but Onii-chan… he knew about things that the adults didn't know about. Like that there really were demons and stuff. So while he gave Fuuma an incredulous look at the part about sake, he didn't dismiss the whole story. Instead he told him to go to bed and not to wake him up again like that.

Fuuma sighed as he padded quietly down the hallway to his own bedroom. He wondered if he could bring Onii-chan with him sometime. Yuko was a little bit like Setsuka in some ways. Onii-chan might like her.

It didn't occur to him until he was drifting back to sleep to wonder why he had wound up in the shop in the first place if she hadn't needed to send him somewhere tonight.


	4. Chapter 4

_Author's Note: Yes, yes, I'm sure you're wondering who the heck Fuuma is talking to here. You'll find out eventually. :P_

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You know, I actually did figure out later why Mom and Dad never told Seishirou good night. It was because they were afraid of him.

You see, Mom and Dad got married kind of young, it was an arranged marriage thing and they were just going along with it because it was expected of them. They actually did start to feel some affection for one another though somewhere along the lines I guess; I mean they were really compatible with one another. They both obsessed over appearances and I think they approved of the way each other handled themselves. They didn't want to just keep up with the Jones' as the saying goes; they wanted to _be_ the Jones'. So they decided it was time to start having children I guess and build up their perfect little family. You know, a son, a daughter, a dog, and a white picket fence. The whole shebang.

So Setsuka was born first obviously. They were really happy with this at first. I mean, she was absolutely gorgeous even when she was a little kid. I mean I wasn't around for it of course, but I've seen pictures of her when she was little and knew her as a teenager and all that. She was the kind of person who from about the time she could walk you could tell immediately she was going to grow up to be a total heartbreaker. And she was smart too. Brilliant actually. They discovered that she had an I.Q. well over genius when she was about three.

You know, I think she would have been crazy anyway, but Mom and Dad trying to force her to dumb down so that she would seem more "lady-like" didn't help. I can't say for sure but my guess is that was the catalyst that got her brain chemistry churning.

Much to my parents' dismay, she began to show signs of mental instability. And by that I mean she would do things like bite other children until they bled and suck on the blood from it. I know that sounds like the intro to a sexy vampire story or something but it was actually really creepy; I saw her do it a couple of times even when she was older.

Anyway, she was diagnosed with Renfield's Syndrome and Mom and Dad already started looking into having her committed. They were pretty reluctant at first though, I guess because they were worried what the neighbors would think about their pretty little girl, their gem, suddenly disappearing. That's only because the neighbors didn't know just yet that she was bat shit insane.

In the middle of all of this stress, Mom found out she was pregnant again. So imagine for a minute, right? You're the kind of person who just wants to have the most normal (a.k.a. boring but hey, do each their own) life imaginable. You've had a kid who you thought would fulfill your every hope and dream by being a pretty little doll that would just do what you wanted and make you look wonderfully successful. Then it turned out that little doll was totally off her rocker and actually was kind of screwing up your picture-perfect life. Now you've got another kid on the way. What do you do?

Obviously you expect this kid to make up for the one you already have.

That's what my parents did anyway. So when Seishirou was born they were absolutely delighted. In many ways he was a lot like Setsuka at first. I mean, he was gorgeous too, and brilliant, but that was okay because he was a boy. It's alright for boys to be that smart, right? Of course when he tested as a genius, my parents did worry a bit that he would start going vampire-boy on people too, but nope, Seishirou never was into the whole sucking blood thing.

So Setsuka was dragged around to numerous psychologists and psychiatrists and doped up every which way, until they decided that the best solution was clearly to just home school her and keep her cooped up in the house all the time. Meanwhile, Seishirou, the golden child as it were, went off to the most prestigious private school in the area. So as far as my parents were concerned, everything was A-okay, right? They had their perfect child after all and they could mostly forget about the other one, the dud I guess.

That's how it seemed for a while anyway. Seishirou never really did anything outright disturbing like Setsuka. However, things began to happen when he was around I guess you could say. Like they visited a friend of the family once and their cat took a liking to Seishirou. He played with it a lot while they were there and then shortly after they left, the family discovered the cat dead as a doornail. They couldn't prove that Seishirou did anything to it though. I mean there were no visible wounds, its neck wasn't broken, anything like that. It had simply died in its sleep, and they thought maybe it had had an aneurism or something and it was just strange coincidence that Seishirou had been playing so much with it. But other neighborhood pets started to go missing and just like before, no one could ever directly link Seishirou to it, but everyone began to grow uneasy around him.

My parents tried to ignore it at first I guess, thinking everyone was being overly suspicious. I mean Seishirou was still pretty little, I think they couldn't figure out how a four-year-old would even commit some of the crimes he started getting suspected of. I think they severely underestimated Onii-chan, truth be told.

Anyway, it was when they went as chaperones on a class field trip to a butterfly exhibit that they too began to worry. The place kept all kinds of live butterflies in this huge greenhouse kind of thing and the kiddos were running around chasing them for the most part, as you know, four-year-olds are likely to do with brightly colored flying bugs.

Seishirou was a pretty calm kid though and he was sort of quietly wandering around the exhibit, admiring the foliage or whatever it was he was doing back then. No one really paid him any mind because he really was not a trouble-maker in school. It was only when she looked up to check on him that Mom realized that a group of black swallowtail butterflies had gathered around him and he seemed to be getting on quite well with them.

(I should mention I guess if you didn't know, where I come from, black swallowtails are thought to be messengers of the death god.)

So needless to say, my parents were thoroughly spooked from then on when it came to Seishirou.

Now they tried to keep careful watch on Setsuka and Seishirou during the limited time that the two of them were together. Didn't need the pretty little boy getting any scars from his sister attacking him you know. The tried to watch the two of them like hawks.

But when it became obvious even to them that Seishirou was not a normal kid either, they began to think that it was because of Setsuka somehow. That she must have influenced him and twisted their perfect dream kid. They also foolishly believed that hiding her away and not allowing Seishirou to see her anymore would fix the problem. No longer under her poisonous influence, Seishirou would just go back to being a normal, beautiful and intelligent little boy right?

So they kept Setsuka in a sort of separate addition to the house that was always locked and refused to tell Seishirou where she was or let him go see her. I bet that's when Seishirou got really good at sneaking into places because there's no way in hell he didn't visit her anyway.

Speculations aside though, Seishirou remained a creepy little kid, much to my parents' dismay. So then I suppose they decided to follow the motto "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again" because that's where I came in to the story.

I was a pretty normal looking kid and I'm not stupid, but you know, I'm not a genius like my siblings. My parents couldn't have been more relieved.

I guess you could say all their hopes and dream got shifted from Seishirou to me.

And I completely lived up to them for most of my childhood. I mean I was pretty normal for the most part as a toddler. I think they believe it was because Setsuka was supposedly gone. She couldn't corrupt me right? Ha, I'm sure they would have had matching strokes if they had known that ever since I could walk, Seishirou would take me to that secret part of the house to visit her.

I guess you could say I instinctively knew that my parents were desperate for a normal kid. Goes with the territory of wishes I suppose. So ever since I was little I tried to be just what they wanted from me, whether it was what I wanted to be or not. It was sort of like I couldn't be anything else for a long time.

So to my parents I was a dream come true of sorts for a while. Nothing but an ordinary, obedient, normal child who could grow up to be an ordinary, obedient adult like them.

Funny how things don't work out the way you plan them huh?


	5. Chapter 5

A few weeks later, Fuuma was at school, playing on the playground with his fellow classmates as he did most days. They were playing kickball, one of his favorite pastimes. He had developed quite a love for sports ever since he was old enough to kick a ball around and already coaches from the local junior high schools were scouting him to play for their teams. He, meanwhile, had barely taken any notice of them, playing purely for the fun of the game, despite his parents' encouragements to pursue his athletic ability as seriously as possible.

So rather than enrolling in any particular club or athletic program, he played on an ordinary playground with ordinary children. And so it was this, and one fatefully powerful kick that sent a ball soaring into a neighborhood yard and Fuuma trotting after it on a recovery mission that led to his second encounter with the space-time witch.

One moment he had been crawling through a hole in a fence into someone's backyard intend to retrieve the ball that was just in sight, when he looked down for a moment, distracted by a scrape on his hand, and looked back up to find that the previously overgrown, gnome-strewn backyard had been replaced by what looked like a garage sale in someone's yard as a teenager in a white smock and glasses grumbled as he carried boxes out of an old house.

"Uuum. Hi." Fuuma chirped, a little confused, but up for whatever he had just wandered into.

The boy dropped a chest he was carrying on his foot with a surprised yelp.

"Oh! Sorry!" Fuuma rushed forward to help him, leaning down to pick up the chest.

"No! Don't touch-"

The warning came too late though as he had already stood up with the chest in his arms. "What?"

The bespectacled boy gave him a bewildered look as a voice from behind them called out. "What's all the commotion out here?"

Fuuma turned around to see the woman who had given him sake a few weeks ago.

"Hi!" He cried cheerfully, trying unsuccessfully to wave with the chest in his arms. "I'm back! Hey! Didn't you say that I would come back when you needed me?" He trotted over to her, feeling the swell of excitement. "Do you need me now?"

Yuko chuckled. "I suppose you could say that."

"Cool! What for?"

"Watanuki!" She called over his head. "We have a guest! It's rude not to offer snacks!"

The boy with the glasses scoffed. "You just want snacks for yourself."

"Oh come now, this is a growing young boy we have here!" Yuko insisted. "He needs his energy!" She gave Fuuma a strangely gentle smile before gesturing for him to enter the shop as well. He made a move to return the chest he was still holding to the other unusual artifacts scattered over the yard but Yuko stopped him, telling him to bring it inside as well.

"How come?"

"We'll need it in a bit." She led him back to the table, told him to set the chest aside and immediately began drinking as soon as Watanuki poured the first cup of sake. "So what's going on in your life kiddo?"

Fuuma shrugged as he sipped at orange-flavored tea. "Well at school we're learning fractions."

Yuko waved a hand. "I don't mean that kind of thing. I mean the important stuff."

"Huh?" Fuuma thought about the past few days. "Well Onii-chan let me build a blanket fort in his room the other day while Mom and Dad weren't home!" He announced excitedly. "Normally I'm not even allowed in his room!"

Yuko laughed. "He doesn't want you messing with his stuff huh? Typical older brother."

Fuuma shook his head as he bit into a French pastry Watanuki had just provided. "It's not that. Mom and Dad don't want me going in there."

"What do you mean?"

The little boy shrugged. "Actually they don't really like us being alone together at all but sometimes we sneak off to go visit Onee-chan anyway." He gave Yuko a serious look. "But that's a secret, okay?"

She nodded slowly, studying him carefully.

"So what's the story with the chest?" Fuuma asked eagerly. "Is there something neat in it? Can we open it?"

"No!" Watanuki shrieked from the other side of the room. "There's probably something that will try to strangle you or something in it!"

"Strangle me?" Fuuma lit up with even more excitement. "You mean like there's something alive in there?"

"Who knows what's in there." Watanuki glared at the chest like it had done him some personally injury. "But trust me, it can't be something good if it belongs to _her._" He jabbed a finger at Yuko.

"Hey!" Fuuma objected. "She's really cool!"

"No she's not! She's selfish and lazy and-"

"You take that back!" Fuuma felt his face grow hot as he curled his hands into small fists.

"Oh what, you want a piece of me you crazy little kid? You're just as weird as she is!"

"Watanuki." Yuko said softly and the teenager stopped in his tracks. She leaned across the table and laid one finger on the lid of the chest beside them. "There is nothing in this right now." She informed Fuuma calmly.

"Right now?"

"Yes."

"Is there… supposed to be something in it?" The boy wondered.

"Not necessarily. This box is for carrying things that one should not hold with one's bare hands too long."

"You mean like hot pots and pans?"

Yuko laughed. "No, like sacred things that would be tainted by a human touch."

"How could they be tainted by a human touch?" Fuuma stared at the chest, just now noticing that the design ornately carved into the lid was that of a pair of wings, one feathery and angelic, and the other leathery and bat-like.

"Humans pour their thoughts and desires into everything that they do, even if they don't realize it." Yuko explained. "Even touching… no, _especially_ when touching something. Those thoughts and desires often change the object itself, making it kinder, or crueler, or simply different than it was before. This box is designed to repel the stain of emotions and protect whatever it carries from them."

"Are you going to go get something that you need to protect like that with it?"

Yuko's fingertip left the lid to press against Fuuma's cheek, turning his head to face her.

"No. You are."

"I am?"

"Yes."

"What is it that I'm going to get?"

"A feather."

Fuuma considered this. "There are a bunch of birds who live in a nest right outside Onee-chan's window. I could probably sneak some feathers out of there for you."

Yuko shook her head with a patient smile. "Not just any feathers will work. I need a very special feather."

"Oh." Fuuma thought hard. "Like a parrot feather?"

"Like an angel feather."

"Angel?" Fuuma's eyes grew round as saucers. "Don't angels live in heaven?"

"Most of them do, yes."

The boy shifted uneasily. "Are you going to kill me and make me go to heaven then?"

Yuko laughed. "No, the angel I need you to go ask lives on Earth with a human."

Relief washed over Fuuma. "Oh, okay. So what do I do, just go ask for it?"

Yuuko gave him a smile that could only be called sinister. "Something like that. Why don't you go see an angel that I know." She suggested, careful not to answer his question directly.

"Okay. How do I get to them?"

"Well there's the long way or the short way. Which would you rather take?" She offered sweetly.

"The short way, duh." Fuuma answered automatically.

"Alright then, follow me."

She led him to the dust-infested back storage room once more and in one corner she paused suddenly, causing little Fuuma, who had been trailing behind her like a duckling to run head-on into her leg. One he recovered from the jarring surprise, he followed Yuko's intent gaze to the ceiling where a mirror seemed to be mounted between the rafters. It created the dizzying effect of looking at one's self upside down and Fuuma was so disoriented as he craned his neck to see better in the dingy light filtering in from the doorway that he lost balanced and tumbled over backward, knocking into a pot that left a streak of fine red powder across the end of his shirt. He hastily returned the pot to its original position however and did his best to dust away the powder, hoping that Yuko had not noticed. Indeed she seemed so absorbed in staring into the mirror that she did not take note.

Just when Fuuma was beginning to wonder if she was simply indulging her own vanity by staring at her reflection, Yuko snapped her fingers and the surface of the mirror rippled like water, revealing an entirely different scene from the one in the shop. The dim lightbulb brightened to sunshine and the cobwebbed brown of the shop shifted to the blues and greens of a lovely outdoors scenery.

"This is the street." Yuko informed him matter-of-factly. "That house down there at the very end?" She pointed out a house whose courtyard sported mysteriously verdant plant life when compared from above with its neighbors. "That's where the angel lives."

"Okay, but how do I get there?"

She at last looked down at him with a grin. "'Objects in mirror are closer than they appear'." She remarked with a hint of laughter.

"You mean if I reached up I could tou-" Fuuma extended an arm toward the ceiling and felt a sudden jerk. The next thing he knew he was tumbling from the sky, watching the ground below approach at an alarming rate. When a crow swooped by, he thought at first that perhaps he was saved as it might help slow his fall. He quickly realized his mistaken trust as the bird pecked furiously at his side, breaking away only to maintain its balance and give a shrieking cry for backup before resuming its assault.

"Hey! Quit it!" Fuuma kicked at the bird and it briefly turned to glare at him. He gasped to glimpse the red glow of its eyes. "Whoa." He remarked dully, momentarily distracted from his plight before realizing once more that he was plummeting to the ground at an alarming rate.

"Help!" He cried, waving his arms in an approximation of a swimming motion as if the same principles of motion that applied to water might also apply to air.

Something grabbed the back of his shirt, choking him for a second, but slowing his fall. He struggled around to look up and see a spiky-haired man studying him suspiciously.

"You're not a little demon."

"Demon?" Only then did Fuuma notice the leathery wings responsible for controlling their descent. "Oh! Are you a huge demon then?"

"Huge?" The man's eye twitched and Fuuma realized then that one of them was missing. "Are you calling me fat, kid?"

"Huh? No, I'm sorry! That's not what I meant! Please don't kill me Demon-san!"

Another eye twitch as they landed and Fuuma began to fear that the demon was not going to heed his pleas until a gentle voice called out.

"Kukuyo?"

Fuuma raised his head to see a beautiful woman watching them both and he was instantly struck by the desire to run to her and bury his face in her fair hair, let her wrap her arms around him like the loving mother she surely must be.

"It wasn't a demon after all, just some kid falling from the sky."

The grip on the back of Fuuma's collar abruptly released and he tumbled to the ground.

"Are you alright?" The lady asked again with a voice like warm honey and Fuuma nodded shyly as he pulled himself up.

"Where did you come from, little one?"

He pointed upward, too nervous to speak.

Both the lady and the demon looked up in confusion.

"The sky?" She asked, puzzled.

"No, from the shop. I mean- that is- I came from, um, a friend's." Fuuma stumbled through what he knew immediately was an inadequate explanation. He decided instead to change the subject. "Are you an angel?"

The woman smiled softly. "Yes I am."

Fuuma rocked slightly on his heels. _An angel. He was talking to a real live angel!_

"Can I have a feather?" He asked, suddenly remembering his mission.

"A feather?"

"Uh huh- a friend of mine said she needs one." He held up the box. "And that it needs to go in here so humans don't get it dirty or something."

The angel leaned in close to examine the box, letting a hand rest just millimeters above the polished wood.

"You can touch it if you want." Fuuma thrust the box out a little further and the angel swiftly leaned back.

"No. I can't." She gave him an almost mournful look. "And I cannot give you the feather that you need."

"But you have lots!" Fuuma protested.

The demon shifted so that the angel was partially obscured behind him.

"She said she can't, kid. Go home."

"But I really, really need one!"

"Kukuyo." The angel lay a hand soothingly on the demon's arm. "Why do you need a feather?"

"Because Yuko said to get one!"

"Yuko?"

"Should have known that bitch was involved."

Fuuma gasped at the demon's strong language and the angel sighed in exhasperation.

"Do you happen to know why Yuko-san wanted you to get this feather?"

Fuuma shook his head.

"Who cares? Why should we help her?"

"It's not about her; it's about her clients who might need the help."

"Even I think clients coming to her is like making a deal with the devil." The demon crossed his arms.

The angel gave him a look that was clearly less than amused.

"Why have you become involved with the Space-Time Witch, little one?" She knelt before Fuuma and rested a hand on his cheek, her touch light and delicate as a soft wind.

"Witch?" Fuuma shook his head. Witches were ugly and had warts. Yuko was beautiful, if a bit odd.

"Did you make a wish with her? I'm sure we could find some way to help you without having to ask her for anything…"

"But I didn't wish for anything!"

The angel and demon exchanged baffled glances. "Then why are you here?"

"She just asked me to get a feather for her."

The demon snorted in derision. "And you thought it'd be a good idea to just do whatever that maniac says?"

"She's not a maniac!" Fuuma protested quickly but realized internally that he had a point. Why was he just doing what Yuko told him?

"You should just go home and forget you ever met her."

"I… don't know how." Fuuma fingered the top of the chest, glad that he still at least had that. "I'm not sure I can."

Sympathy washed over the angel and she stood gracefully. "As I said, I cannot provide you with what you need-"

"Why not?"

"I'm no longer pure."

"Huh?"

The demon took another step forward but Fuuma couldn't tell if this time it was protective or… apologetic?

"But there may be someone here who can help you. She isn't here right now, but she should get home this evening. Why don't you stay here with us until she returns?"

"You're going to let him in the house?"

The angel ignored the demon and took Fuuma's hand, leading him into a surprisingly traditional home. Fuuma couldn't resist the urge to wait until her back was turned for a moment to turn around and stick his tongue out at the demon.

"Why you little!"

Fuuma jumped as a ball of flames ignited in the demon's hand and he reflexively leaned into the angel.

"We have some games." She announced, pulling a box from the hall closet. The fire evaporated immediately as she turned to face the two of them.

And so that was how Fuuma passed an afternoon playing mah-jong with an angel and a demon.

It was only hours later, well after the sun had set that they at last heard a key in the door. Fuuma's head snapped up in excitement but rather than an angel, the person walking through the front door, arms laden with grocery sacks, was an extremely ordinary looking man. Fuuma's shoulders drooped in disappointment until he noticed a faint glow behind the guy. Following him with tiny fluttering wings, was a… a flying baby?

"Welcome home."

"Oh! We have a guest!" The cherub cried happily as she too caught sight of him.

The man eyed him warily.

"He's just a human child." The angel answered his unspoken question. The man nodded and disappeared into the kitchen without a word but the flying baby drifted closer to the table in blatant delight.

"I'm Kohaku!" She happily declared.

"What are you?" Fuuma's reply was blunt and the demon glared at him for his rudeness.

"I'm an angel!" The cherub was undeterred in her childish joy.

Fuuma looked pointedly between the woman he had met earlier and this… small creature floating in the air before him. "No you're not."

The girl looked taken aback by the comment and she withdrew slightly, curling her hands closer to her chest as though afraid that he might bite.

"Kohaku is an angel as well. The more powerful of us are the only ones who can retain our larger forms at night." The woman from earlier explained gently.

"Oh. Sorry."

"It's okay!" And with that, the excited grin was instantly back.

"He has a request for you." The older angel continued, ever playing mediator.

"Oh yeah!" Fuuma had almost forgotten what he was here for by this point and quickly stood to give the small angel a formal bow. "May I please have a feather?"

"Of course!" The angel shook herself slightly like a dog drying off from the rain until a few feathers shook loose. She handed one to Fuuma, who was shocked by how easy that had been.

He ran a hand along the lash-like sides of the feather, admiring the incredible softness of it, the snowiness…

Wait.

He gasped in dismay to see that a small oily smudge had already appeared on the stem.

"What's wrong?"

Diving to the floor, Fuuma tried to explain that there was a box and that he needed another feather. For one heart-stopping moment, he thought that he had lost the box, but quickly rediscovered it beneath the table. "Aha!" Holding it up like a Holy Grail, he asked once more for a feather, but that this time it be placed in the box rather than his hand. To his continued surprise, the angel instantly complied without question or argument, only a smile.

Fuuma quickly closed the lid, les anything else contaminate this precious specimen, and offered to return the other feather but the angel declined.

"You should keep it for protection." The older of the two quietly suggested and Fuuma shrugged before pocketing the feather. He supposed it would at least by good evidence to show Onii-san to prove the story he would have later. Just then it dawned on him that although his mission was accomplished, he had no idea how to get back to Yuko. Was there some way to fall back into the sky he wondered? Could the angel fly him up there to whatever point he had come from?

He asked the elder angel this and she laughed like a summer breeze. "You won't get back that way but I can open up the gates back to her shop for you."

She led him outside, back into the garden where they had first met and he watched as she traced some symbol onto the trunk of a sakura tree with her finger. To Fuuma's surprise, the symbol glowed as though brushed on with glow-in-the-dark paint. The angel drifted to another tree a few meters away to draw a similar sign on a peach blossom tree before motioning him to walk through them.

"I don't get it. Won't I just walk into another part of the garden?" Fuuma eyed the space between the trees. "That looks an awful lot like just more grass."

"Some things do not appear as they are."

The boy tilted his head at the cryptic remark but the angel hadn't steered him wrong yet so once again he shrugged it off, adjusted the box under his arm, and began to stride toward the opening.

"Be careful, little one. The road is long and not always empty."

"What?" Fuuma glanced over his shoulder as he stepped across the border between the trees but just then, everything vanished and he was left in a swirling fog. He nearly panicked for a moment before he realized that there was a slender pathway beneath his feet and he could just see in the distance that it led to a doorway that he assumed led to Yuko's.

The sense of security turned out to be false however when after only a few steps, something grabbed at his ankle. He stumbled and nearly fell off of the pathway, crashing down to his knees. An amorphous blob like ink turned sentient was wrapped around his foot, reaching up to grab him.

No, to grab the box, he realized.

He jerked his foot away, kicking the creature in the head (or so he hoped) before leaping to his feet. He skittered backward a few paces, keeping an eye on his first attacker until he bumped into something else. Whirling around, Fuuma came face to face with another creature.

"So pretty… so powerful." This one was larger and just defined enough to display an impressive set of dagger-like teeth and the hands that reached out to snatch the box most definitely sported a similar set of claws. "Give it to us…" The thing hissed, jerking at the box so hard that it was nearly wrenched from Fuuma's hands.

"No!" The boy cried, pulling back with all his might. Another shadow creature swooped down from above, also taking hold of the box.

"Go away." The clawed creature hissed, striking out at the new arrival. "It's mine!"

Fuuma took advantage of their distraction as the shadows fought one another and pulled the box free, sprinting for the door. More ill-defined creatures sprang from the fog, grabbing at him as he ran and he nearly tripped several more times but he made it to the door at last, thinking that he was home free when suddenly an enormous shadow slammed against it, blocking his exit.

"Give me the feather." The thing demanded and an idea struck Fuuma.

"You want a feather?" He ripped the tarnished feather from his pocket and held it up. "Come and get it!" He made a move to throw the feather away, hiding it in his palm as he had seen Onii-san do before to tease cats with toy mice. The shadow lunged past him and Fuuma was able to throw the door open and fall through it before anything else could stop him.

He lay gasping on the floor, simply grateful to be alive for a few moments before he realized that he was surrounded by a broom, a mop, some window cleaner, and a few other assorted janitorial items. Yuko's face appeared above him with a mockingly sweet smile.

"You didn't have too much trouble, I presume?"

"What _were_ those things?"

"Half-formed thoughts and ideas, born of hesitation and abandoned in the space between mind and reality."

"What? But why did they want the feather?" He held up the box demonstrably.

"Oh good, you did get it." She plucked the box happily from his hands. "Angels hold the key to creation, not the spark of inspiration itself mind you, but the key to make it real. The creatures in that space wanted to become real, and could have, with this.

"What would have happened if they had gotten it?" The boy shuddered. "Would they have, I dunno, tried to destroy the world or something?"

Yuko laughed. "Not all ideas and dreams are so dire or negative." She knelt to press her forefinger against the center of Fuuma's forehead. "Besides. For all we know, you were once one of those creatures, born into reality through creative willpower." She glanced at his hand, still clutching the tainted feather. "You really should hold onto that, but maybe not so much with your bare hands."

"Yeah, I was going to show it to Onii-chan." Fuuma paused. "Wait, I don't know how to get back home either now."

"That part's easy. Just walk out of the shop."

"You mean like just out the front door?"

"Of course."

Fuuma wrinkled his nose. "Of course? I've gotten to all kinds of places by crawling through fences, falling through a mirror, and walking through a… a space/time warp or something. Who thinks to use a front door?"

Yuko laughed. "A fair point, but nonetheless." She helped him to his feet and showed him the way to the door. Just before he could leave however, Fuuma paused and turned back.

"What was the feather for anyway?"

"Can't tell you! That would violate customer/wish-granter confidentiality!" Yuko winked.

Fuuma had a feeling that he was not going to get any more of an explanation than that so he slipped back out of the shop…

And directly into the playground he had been on ages ago it seemed. Except that this time it was deserted and the sun was sinking in the sky, casting a surreal orange glow over everything. Fuuma was just beginning to wonder if he should bother going back to the school and trying to explain where he had been when a familiar face appeared from behind one of the slides.

"Where have you been?" Seishirou demanded, the annoyance clearly visible on his face. "I've been looking for you for _hours_. The teachers thought you might have been kidnapped or something. I had to tell them some stupid story about how you had come to me in the lunchroom saying that you were sick and that I walked you home. One of your buddies said you just disappeared out here earlier."

"Onii-chan." Fuuma sighed in relief. "Do you believe in angels and demons?"

Seishirou regarded him coldly but not incredulously as Fuuma had expected.

"Yes. Why?"

Fuuma wondered a bit at the lack of hesitation behind his brother's response but he was too weary to ponder it carefully.

"Onii-chan, you won't believe the day I've had."

.

_A/N: The angels and demons, as well as the guy that they are boarding with are Kukuyo, Hisui, Kohaku, and Shuichiro from Wish in case anyone doesn't recognize them. :P_


End file.
